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The Empire itself provided Christianity's ability to move beyond the local geographic area through the advantage of Roman roads and the links between Roman cities. [ 17 ] [ 104 ] Having begun moving outward from Jerusalem, Christianity also directly connected to remote large cities such as Rome.
Tacitus reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 some in the population held Nero responsible [17] and that to diffuse blame, he targeted and blamed the Christians [17] (or Chrestians [18]). The Romans tended towards syncretism , seeing the same gods under different names in different places of the Empire.
Conversions tore families apart: Justin Martyr tells of a pagan husband who denounced his Christian wife, and Tertullian tells of children disinherited for becoming Christians. [10] Traditional Roman religion was inextricably interwoven into the fabric of Roman society and state, but Christians refused to observe its practices.
Neither Pliny nor Trajan mention the crime that Christians were supposed to have committed, except for being a Christian; and other historical sources do not provide a simple answer to what that crime could be, but most likely due to the stubborn refusal of Christians to worship Roman gods; making them appear as objecting to Roman rule. [3] [4]
A. N. Sherwin-White records that serious discussion of the reasons for Roman persecution of Christians began in 1890 when it produced "20 years of controversy" and three main opinions: first, there was the theory held by most French and Belgian scholars that "there was a general enactment, precisely formulated and valid for the whole empire, which forbade the practice of the Christian religion.
Map of the Roman Empire with the distribution of Christian congregations of the first three centuries AD. The growth of Early Christianity from its obscure origin c. AD 40, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 400, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches.
[9] [10] Scholars view it as establishing three separate facts about Rome around AD 60: (i) that there was a sizable number of Christians in Rome at the time, (ii) that it was possible to distinguish between Christians and Jews in Rome, and (iii) that at the time pagans made a connection between Christianity in Rome and its origin in Roman Judaea.
Under the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine, there was a relaxation of attitudes toward abortion and exposure of children. [1] Bakke writes, "Since an increasing number of Christian parents were poor and found it difficult to look after their children, the theologians were forced to take into account this situation and reflect anew on ...